Systems and methods of handling meta data for describing one or more resources are known in the art. Such systems and methods may find application in e-learning systems and methods. They are however, not limited in this respect, and have further application in other fields, for example, data base management and other fields where meta data is used.
Systems and applications for providing e-learning, also referred to in the art, inter alia, as computer based training, computer assisted instruction and technology supported learning, are known. Such applications and systems use content, for example, lectures and book chapters, which are delivered to users electronically. In order to describe the e-learning content, meta data is associated with the content. XML (extensible mark-up language) based standards is one technology, which is conventionally used to define meta data. During the creation of e-learning content it is desirable to keep track of the meta data associated with the content. To this end, several standards for defining e-learning meta data have evolved. For example, learning object meta data standard (LOM) and Dublin Core. However, in order to accommodate the needs of a broad range of users of the e-learning content including e-learning participants as well as e-learning providers, a “one size fits all” approach is used. As a result, the existing standards include large quantities of meta data definitions which are not required by some users or not available to other users. Thus, a large proportion of conventional meta data is optional. This results in a particular user or group of users, for example, an organization, who wish to use the standards, not being able to rely on a particular meta data, which they require, being present in a conventional meta data file. For example, conventional standards, such as LOM and Dublin Core have a relatively large set of fixed values with a predefined semantic which can be used in documents formatted according to these standards using for example, an XML tag. For example, fixed values with a predefined semantic include author, title, etc. Due to their fixed values, defined semantic and predefined XML tags, such standards are useful for exchanging meta data between different independent users (for example, users not connected by the same intranet) or different organisations. However, as mentioned above, it is not optimal for use within an organisation. Due to the large number of possible values necessary in order to account for most possible user requirements, most values are optional and can contain arbitrary text. Further, there is no restriction with respect to which meta data values are to be maintained and which format they should preferably be in for a particular user or organisation. Yet further, it is not possible to maintain meta data, that may not be covered by the possible fixed values of the standards, for example, meta data that may be unique to a particular user or organisation.